Electric Frankenstein
How To Make A Monster (Victory)
by Marc Hirsh
Electric Frankenstein
How To Make A Monster (Victory)
by Marc Hirsh
originally published in Space City Rock, Fall 2000
On the evidence of their full length debut, Electric Frankenstein is that strange rarity in rock 'n' roll, a band seemingly more influenced by the junk culture of movies and TV than by the music of their forebears. How To Make A Monster is littered with samples of dialogue from horror and B-movie sources (including, oddly enough, Mallrats, if I hear correctly), so that 1950's stiff-backed scientist types interject precautionary statements about things like "the unmistakable smell of female" in odd places between and occasionally during songs. Even the first track, "I Was Modern Prometheus," is nothing more than a pre-horror-movie warning dropped in place of, say, an actual song that would cover the same thing.
That may be because the songs don't say a whole lot anyway, and that's certainly not why you'd listen. Electric Frankenstein specializes in 1970s-style fat-bottomed Les-Paul-through-Marshall-stacks riff-rock of the type that used to come wrapped in sleeves with the words "PLAY LOUD" emblazoned on them (often with more than one exclamation point). Problem is, they neglect to actually provide any riffs, opting instead to pound out power chords almost exclusively; I don't think I heard a single major chord on the album. Every song whizzes by at exactly the same velocity until they blur into one another. It's kind of like what Raw Power would've been like if the first four bars of "Search & Destroy" were repeated ad infinitum. How To Make A Monster shows that Electric Frankenstein have power. Now they just need to find something to plug into.